Why blog ?

I opened my account with bloggers on 3^rd Aug 2006, which is almost 3 years ago. It was more for fun and grabbing the url. So I started off with some post of friends, happenings and since I read a lot and love movie some thoughts around a book / movie forms quite a large part of my blog. Then some incidents / visuals /philosophical thought which keeps nagging at me or provokes me....But in the end it’s the sheer joy of writing.

Also for me it was to inculcate the discipline of writing, it’s difficult with a job which requires to travel for 10 days in a month, and every day is layered with series of meetings, negotiations, con-calls so by the time you come back and the kids hug you good night, the only thing you want to do is to curl up on the sofa and watch a nice movie or read a book….It requires much less of an effort. Although, I always have a note pad handy with me to jot down few thoughts which at a later date gets transformed into a poem/story and surfaces in my blog ....

But then, as someone very rightly said “If you keep doing what you always do, you will end up getting what you always got” and I don’t want to end up just seeing movies and reading book. I want to make those movies and write those books and writing just helps me to clarify a few things and gives it a perspective.

For lot of people blog is an affirmation of what they are, because they can write things they are not comfortable talking about it with people who are around them. They would rather write and discuss it online with people whom they don’t know.

For me, blog is just an online assimilation. I just trust google more than my laptop…..

copenhagen & platic bags

I had recently visited Mumbai when I saw this installation near worli, Couldn’t make out the building on which it was put up. “1000’s of mineral water bottles are stringed together and draped from top to bottom of the building in such a way that from far it actually looks like a water fall. The location is so focused that you just can’t miss it.” In the bottom there is only 1 line which says “Is this the only waterfall which our grand children’s will see?”

I found it very thought provoking, although this was much before the shindig happening around the world on global warming. As a lay man and as an educated individual I feel for the cause but I guess the time has come to do something more than just be aware. So I thought I will just start by saying “no to plastic bags” and make a beginning…..

For more on the impact of these plastic bags, see this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6rOZjXi03c or you can just google and sift thru a million links.

The search page gave me a comfort that a million people in the world are at least thinking about it and hopefully most of them are implementing it.

100 years of Solitude….

It was a sheer coincidence or maybe it was a game of destiny that I was reading “100 years of solitude – by Gabriel Garcia Marquez” on the eve of my 40th birthday. I turned 41 on 4th Dec. But since I kept the book down yesterday night at 1 am, I was haunted by the word “solitude”. Some books are just meant to be read and forgotten like Dan Brown’s latest which gave me company during my recent travel to Delhi and Chandigarh….but some books jolt you up, cajole you to look back in your life and remember fleeting moments of the past, ponder over the present and helps you to tone down your expectations from the coming future.

Occasions like birthdays have an elevated sense of celebrations all around the entire day, starting from the midnight surprise, to the early morning hugs and the secret glances going around the house when you know something is being planned but you dare not ask albeit you spoil the fun. And, of course the sms’s which start pouring in from 6.30 am (yes that’ when I got first the message).

So reading a book where revolution, suffering, struggle to survive, death and of course solitude was the recurring theme was probably a jolt to reality. By the end of the book I fell in love with the word solitude because I figured since the day I took my first step outside my home in 1987 and landed in a small village to do my engineering to the time when I landed in Mumbai to start work to the time when I was waiting outside the maternity ward to hear my daughter cry to this moment when I am writing this blog I had only solitude to give me company.

As I finished the book and closed my eyes last 40 years passed by me like a train of images linked only by my moments of solitude. And I felt that everything in life is like an event when you are experiencing it because you are enjoying the moment you want to feel the ecstasy or the pain but very rarely can you reflect at that moment.

As the years go by, lot of things will happen with you, lot of things will happen around you, at times things will happen and at times things will fall apart but the only thread which gives meaning to this life are those moments of solitude when you try and figure out “what this life is all about”?

The HI NI Circus or is it really a scare?

If we were playing “Kaun Banega Crorepati” and I was in place of Amitabh and my kids were the players they would have won hand down.

Can I go for the painting competition in Leela?
The yoga class in Jayanagar?
Lunch in Mainland China ?
No, No, No
The answer for every single question was the same, yes you guessed it HINI.

Are we panicking? Or is it the right thing to do? I think all of us have been asking the same question including my boss. Who prefers me to stay back in Bangalore and plan for the Diwali Sale than walk the streets of Mumbai and get the germs back?

What is a terrorist? Aids? and of course H1 N1 were not common questions I asked my parents in the breakfast table. But they have become part of our daily life. And it will be wishful thinking that they don’t pick up these topics in their school bus, play grounds and school of course.
When the H1 N1 scare started my official mail box got flooded by at least 25 mails a day. So, much so that the web administrator had to give a stern warning not to send such mails. Press, TV, Internet – there seems to be an information overdose. I get 200 + channels watch only 3, 20 pages of newspaper read 10 articles when I browse the billions of websites I actually visit/enjoy only few.

We as a generation have become over cautious. These days we are much more informed, connected and hence more cautious in everything we do. It is difficult to know “Where to draw the line?”.Watch Out. Watch Out. These are the words which scream out before we do anything.

Are we missing out on our sense of adventure?

When we were growing up, we belonged to the “try it out” tribe. I still remember when I stepped out for the first time from my Engineering College I lit my first fag that was 19 87. The last time I stepped out of my MBA in 19 95, I gate crashed into a wedding and enjoyed a hearty Punjabi meal. Oh! What fun even the caterers new us. In between I did lot of other things……will write on that some time later.

It was un programmed life. There was no definition of “What I should do?” & “What I should not?”. There was a kind of freedom which made me felt alive. There was a sense of discovery….I still live by these rules, whether it’s a new author, director, new place I visit even if it’s because of work.

Pic on the right: Tucking into a huge pan (almost looked liked a roll)in Meerut, Begum Pull at night 12o’clock, Lassi in Aligarh, Somewhere between Haridwar and Doon.

I am not sure I will be able to transfer this spirit of adventure to my kids. But a day after the Independence Day I salute my parents for giving me this and I hope 15 years down the line my kids do the same…..

The death of conversation

These days we don’t talk,
We sms,
We mail,
We chat.
We don’t debate
We write blogs
I read between the lines.
Is it a sign of times to come?
I don’t know.

I wrote these lines maybe a month or two back. I have this habit scribbling down a few lines in a small pad in between flights. Sometimes these thoughts grow into a blog and sometimes they get washed down my washing machine. Today at 4 in the morning these thoughts came back to me once again and kept rebounding across my head and in the end forcing me to get up …….

It’s true, I haven’t learnt so much about someone so close thru blog as I could by talking, sharing living together in last 10 years. So what’s wrong, I asked myself? I didn’t have an answer I still don’t but this nagging feeling inside me kept coming back. It was like violation of trust…How come a person so close feels this way I don’t know and I have to go thru someone’s blog to understand her.

My diary was my closest friend till I burnt them few years back. At that time I couldn’t really fathom my action but the feeling was so strong that it propelled me to destroy them. Looking back maybe because it was because I didn’t want her to know / understand me by reading my diary. Why can’t we talk? What’s in my diary is also in my soul. “Let’s discover it on the way rather than you reading the past and coming to conclusions” was my refrain, whenever there was a read request for them.

If we can feel,touch and of course talk, Is there a need to blog? Or should it be there for posterity just to look back and see how we felt about few things on our journey called life...I am not sure reading Jabberwock which I adore is very different from reading someone's blog who is so close to you.

For the time being I would rather start a conversation.

Memoirs…

I started writing a diary probably at the age of 9/10. Don’t remember exactly and continued writing till 5 years back ....again I am not sure when was my last entry. But these were moments which recorded the deepest most personal thoughts sometimes desperate sometimes excited sometimes pure despair.

Reading Kirin Narayan’s “My family and other Saints” brought back those memories. It’s not one of the books which you start liking from the 1st page, (what we typically call the unputdownable) ….but it sort of grows on you. What does one do if – you are the youngest, your dad is an alcoholic, mom an American, whose brother is on his spiritual trip and above it all you stay in a house in Juhu where anybody especially the hippies can come in anytime, stay and go when they want …what she calls the most famous house in the hash trail.

There are kids who do and their kids who think. With thinking come millions of thoughts, constantly bombarding your mind….not all of them find an outlet. In fact most of them get repressed with bursts of anger / despair. All these thinking kids typically also are voracious reader as in the case of kirin and me. Reading gives you access to a world away from your world….and each of us find something to relate to. For some it’s a dream world, a perfect world…when ever I used to read Enid Blyton as a 5 yr old, it was like….Can this be true ?

Coming back to the book, what I liked is the detailing of Kirin and her thoughts as a kid. What was going on inside her mind at that point when a particular incident has happened and the mark it has left in her mind - forever. Her feeling towards her dad, mom, brothers and the entire situation she was in. It was almost like a ship tossing and turning in an ocean with absolutely no sense of direction and control. How this entire chaos has impacted her life and the choices she made in her life.

I believe, what I am today is because of what I went thru in the first 15 years of my life maybe 17/20….If Kirin is studying Anthropology in Winconsin USA writing thesis / paper on sadhus in himalayan foothill etc is because of the spiritual quest which the family was going through when she was growing up. Unfortunately, most of time we don’t have such a direct correlation. Most of the time the thoughts, feelings, are hidden in the recess of our mind / subconscious, especially in the early years of life…when you are making decisions, tossing all the choices thrown at you, growing up – physically and mentally. Most of the time and probably for most of us we don’t have the time to look back at these thoughts, growing up pangs, we prefer to move on.
But I do look back and at times I feel quite helpless. I know I want to provide a perfect environment for my kids so that they can make the best choices in her life…..But I also know I can’t control most of things around me at home or otherwise. The choices I have made in the past are like the seeds sown in the ground. These have now grown and created a garden (or a jungle I don’t know) in which these two saplings are growing. Once the tree starts taking shape I can only try and provide as much water, sunlight, nourishment as I can and leave the rest for them to figure out.

After another 10 – 15 years I don’t know if my kids will have time to look back. But I definitely will because then they would have left our garden and started their own. It will be nice to read / hear how they felt when they were growing up. Did they feel taken care of or did they feel like a ship tossing and turning in an ocean?

Well that’s after a decade as of now it Ahoy! Full stream ahead..

Ode to Pink Floyd

At 01.01 …..date unknown

Sleep alludes….
Why is there is no Signs of Life
Is there anybody out there?
Or Is it just a Wall all around.

Wish you were here? is just a phrase
I know
I am stuck in Terminal Frost.

The great gig in the sky
Was not for me,
At 18, I heard Shine on you crazy diamond?
At 24 - Money, was the post war dream
At 40 – I live life ……Comfortably Numb?

The dark side of the moon was not just
A momentary lapse of reason.
When the division bell rang……
It was the final cut.
I curl up in my bed
I know
When I get up morrow
The show must go on and on and on…..